Reviewed by DAVID VINEYARD:         


L. T. MEADE & ROBERT EUSTACE – The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings. Ward Lock & Co., UK, hardcover, 1899. Dodo Press, UK, softcover, 2009.

   Before the Yellow Peril that reached its apex with Sax Rohmer’s diabolical genius Dr. Fu Manchu, there was the Italian Peril which had among its finer moments, Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola, and this novel by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace.

   THAT a secret society, based upon the lines of similar institutions so notorious on the Continent during the last century, could ever have existed in the London of our day may seem impossible. Such a society, however, not only did exist, but through the instrumentality of a woman of unparalleled capacity and the Brotherhood of the Seven Kings was a name hardly whispered without horror and fear in Italy, and now, by the fascinations and influence of one woman, it began to accomplish fresh deeds of unparalleled daring and subtlety in London. By the wide extent of its scientific resources, and the impregnable secrecy of its organizations, it threatened to become, a formidable menace to society, as well as a source of serious anxiety to the authorities of the law.

   Shades of cammora, omerta, and the Black Hand, the Brotherhood of the Seven Kings as presented here rivals not only the Mafia and Union Corse, but the Si Fan and Spectre, and its leader is both fascinating, beautiful, and evil.

   A scientist of no mean attainments herself, with beauty beyond that of ordinary mortals, she had appealed not only to my head, but also my heart.

   So speaks our narrator, Norman Head, who met the dazzling Katherine in Italy and was enlisted in the Brotherhood only to discover the darkness at its and her core. Now it is 1894, and he has fled to London, where a consultation with Mrs. Kenyon, a friend, over her son, Cecil, the young Lord Kairn, introduces him to the mysterious Dr. Fieta, and to the stately and seductive Madame Koluchy — none other than his own Katherine: “That is the great Mme. Koluchy, the rage of the season, the great specialist, the great consultant. London is mad about her.”

   The poor boy, Cecil, is already in the hands of Mme. Koluchy and the Brotherhood who have evil plans to get the boy out of the way so one Hugh Doncaster can lay claim to money and title. Our hero, without so much as a thought, decides to follow them to Cairo where Dr. Fieta has suggested the climate will benefit Cecil, but from whence he will never return. Norman is made of sterner stuff and will not allow the child to be sacrificed to the sinister Katherine.

   In Malta, Dr. Fieta slips away from him with the boy and heads for Naples, where Norman first knew Katherine, and dreads to go, but will follow if he must.

   We are still only in chapter one, mind you.

   Norman reveals himself as a member of the Brotherhood to Dr. Fieta, discovering the evil doctor has injected the boy with Mediterranean Fever to make the lad appear sick, but the latter will not be moved from his deadly assignment and in a race to save the boy Norman finally corners him as he is about to throw the boy into the sulfurous caldera of Mt. Vesuvius, and it is Dr. Fieta that dies there instead.

   Vesuvius was a favorite scene for melodrama in British fiction in the 19th century, with many a villain or tragic lover meeting their fate there. Varney the Vampire ends his reign of terror in its fires as well. More recently Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child had their hero, FBI agent Aloysious Pendergast, confront his evil brother Diogenes among the sulfurous fumes of the great volcano (Book of the Dead).

   The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings appeared as a serial in The Strand, and much like the early Fu Manchu novels each chapter is a complete short story around the central theme of Norman outwitting and foiling the evil machinations of the Brotherhood against targets in England. Like Conan Doyle and even Bram Stoker, it attempts to take advantage of the then still new ease of travel and communications by employing such modern inventions as steam yachts, railroads, telegrams, and science in general in much the same way writers today like Clive Cussler, Steve Berry, and James Rollins use technology.

   For all the dated nature of books like this, they are the direct ancestor of the books at the top of today’s bestseller lists full of mysterious conspiracies and the like. Today the villains are Islamic extremists and evil corporate interests or shadow governments rather than Italian or Chinese secret societies, but the basics are the same; movement, mystery, incredible odds against one or a handful of protagonists, and general bad guy 101 activity. Here the conspiracies are personal as are the crimes, but they are only one remove from Carl Peterson or Ernst Stavro Blofield threatening England or the World.

   L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace were popular writers in the Strand, who wrote numerous books like this. Both almost always wrote with someone else, him, perhaps most famously Eustace with Dorothy L. Sayers, his being a physician and much desired as a collaborator for the medical expertise he brought with him.

   Miss Meade, Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith, an Irish woman from County Cork, seems to have been the storyteller of the two, penning over 300 books, eleven appearing posthumously. Her books ran the gamut from stories for young girls to sensational fiction, religious, historical, and adventure novels. One of her better known mystery collaborations with Eustace, with whom she penned eleven books, is The Sorceress of the Strand, which features Madame Sara, another villainess. She also collaborated with Dr. Clifford Hallifax (Memoirs of a Physician) and Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas (Under the Dragon Throne).

   As he battles Mme. Koluchy, Norman acquires a friend and ally, Dufrayer, and the pair fight the female mastermind to a stand still, until like Moriarity with Holmes, her full attention seems focused on ridding herself of them. It’s always one of the puzzles of this kind of book that between adventures everything seems forgiven and everyone goes back to normal until the next adventure, until near the end when it is convenient for the writer, the villain finally has enough.

   With Scotland Yard finally onto Mme. Koluchy, she is cornered, and more dangerous than ever. Having killed Dufrayer, she is pursued to her lair by Norman, where she disarms him by means of an electromagnet, and defies him:

    “It is my turn to dictate terms,” she said, in a steady, even voice. “Advance one step towards me, and we die together. Norman Head, this is your supposed hour of victory, but know that you will never take me either alive or dead.”

   And, true to her word, she springs her last deadly device in the furnace of her hellish laboratory that burns at a hellish 2400 degrees Centigrade taking a brave detective with her.

   The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings is entertaining melodrama from another age, well enough written, modern for its period, and minus many of the excesses of the time period. Mme. Koluchy proves a fascinating mix of femme fatale and fiend, and our stalwart heroes at least aren’t as lunkheaded as Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the Fu Manchu saga. All in all it is great fun from the late Victorian period and more than worth finding (simple enough in ebook form).

   You can hear in this simple tale of adventure and intrigue some of the same concerns abroad today, the same xenophobia and the same need to reassure the reader good old fashioned Anglo Saxon values will win out in the end. Like many of today’s thrillers, and those from other eras, it reflects both real and imagined fears of foreign influence, unspeakable conspiracies, and the darkness just beyond the light that haunt middle class imagination across the years. As the mystery novel has always been primarily about the restoration of order from the demons within us the thriller has always been about the thin line between us and the demons just outside our door, forces we have no control over.

   If nothing else, it is a reminder the more things change in popular fiction, the more they stay the same.